The Rewatchables - ‘The Program’ With Bill Simmons, Ryen Russillo, and Kyle Brandt

Episode Date: December 8, 2020

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons, Ryen Russillo, and Kyle Brandt “put the women and children to bed and go lookin' for dinner” after rewatching the 1993 sports drama ‘The Program,’ starring Craig Sheffer, Omar Epps, James Caan, and Halle Berry. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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plus 24-7 U.S.-based support. Millions of business owners already trust Spectrum business. So visit Spectrum.com slash business to learn more. Restrictions apply. Services not available in all areas. Coming up, let's put the woman and children to bed and go looking for fucking dinner, all right? The program is next.

Coming, September 24. Donnell Jefferson. Tailback. Ray Griffin, starting tailback. Darnell Jefferson was a high school superstar. Football saved my life. But now, don't tell me you're phoning for this guy. He's just another gangbanger with speed.

He's got to play by a new set of rules. What's your assignment? Kill everybody. To fight the pressure. Well, they never mention this done recruiting. To survive. The program, rated R. All right, what a special day this is.

Ryan Rissilo is here. Kyle Brant. here, we're going to talk about a college football movie classic. That's also not a classic, but there also has been a lot of college football movies, but this came along at the perfect time in 1993. It's flawed. It's enjoyable. It's entertaining.

Dare I say, might be the best college football movie ever, Kyle Brandt? I don't know. It's the battle. It's going to war with the other guys. Not everybody gets to play football. We're the lucky one. One's. Hell yes, Bill.

This is my favorite sports movie. I am thrilled to have a place at the table. I love this film. Love it. Very personal to me. Got me where I am today. Rosilla? You know, for me, it's a lot.

Like, I don't know how many different times I changed my mind about PEDs at the time. I was really young. I was impressionable. I was 18. And, you know, I had kind of a mindset about it going into the movie. And then I was like, oh, no. And I was like, eh. You know, so a lot like the Queen's Gambit, I think it's.

kind of pro PEDs. One of the enduring lessons is maybe don't listen to the coach. Maybe do what was working that got the started job. You want to tackle that guy from Iowa? Come on. Right. I mean, the goal line stand at Iowa. That's the saddest scene in film since we found out the woman has dementia in the notebook.

James Garner weeping about the Iowa running back trucking Latimer on the goal line. One of the reasons I love this movie so much is it's like watching somebody make this dinner. And if you just look at the table, the dinner looks perfect. It's like, this is everything I want from a movie. And then you taste it. It's like, wow, this stuffing's terrible. Ooh, the cranberry sauce is pretty good. Hmm, turkey's not bad.

Oh, my God, these beans are horrendous. But the recipe is there. It hits all the notes. It tries to tie everything up in two hours. It has the coach who really needs to rejuvenate his program a little bit. It's got good main characters, I think, the quarterback, the linebacker, the Latimer, the kind of basically the special teams guy who moves his way up. And then you got the running back battle.

And it really doesn't care about anyone else in the movie. It's just those six characters. And it works and it works for what it is. But at the same time, Kyle, there's a better movie in here. I know you love this. I know it's your favorite movie ever. But there's still a ceiling that it didn't hit, right? Right? Yeah, I think when I look at your meal analogy, I think there's also, there's too many things on the table.

Like, this movie, this college football movie has two fully flushed out love stories, like two of them, which like, bro, I need more Bull in the Ring drill. Like, I need more head knock and I don't necessarily need the ice skating and the motorcycle. It's too much. And watching it now as an adult, like, when I was 15, I was just perving over Christy Swanson and I loved it. But now, like, it needs a little more football in the football movie, and less cheesy romance. Right. And when there is football, the movie just sails. It does.

Like, when they have that, we're going to talk about it with most rewatchable scenes. But when they have, like, the first real practice session, and they're with that drill called when they're on the circle, just hitting the shit out of each other? Yeah. I mean, holy macro. Riscilla, what's the one thing you would change about this movie? What did it miss the most?

It just felt like at the very end. I mean, this is saying something. that wrote it wrote the sting, which is one of the greatest movies of all time. And to read his backstory of what he wanted to do, you know, you got to remember 93, 94 when he's writing it and when it comes out, you know, where we're at with what movies were like, that this was kind of an edgier version of some of the sports movies that we got. And he was trying to do that real version of it. But it seemed to fall victim to what I think so many TV shows do. A lot of movies are like, all right, how do we wrap a bow on this thing? Like, how do we kind of finish the story? And the fact

that the starting running back is going to somehow in the span of the season, loses girlfriend to Omar Epps, then loses starting job and have to play full back, and then blow a blocking assignment in the last game of the season. And then like an hour later, be like, I got you dog and change the play to get him a touchdown. It felt a little Disney for me. Yeah, I think that's fair. My big takeaway, this is, you know, they make this, this movie comes out 93. TV isn't even really good yet.

94 was when that's when ER launches, NYPD Blue is kind of going at that point and TV's going to another level. To me, this was such an obvious TV show. You watch this now and you're like, oh, they would never make this as a movie now. This would clearly, we have a category later

of would this be a Netflix show. Clearly, this would be a Netflix show. They wouldn't even think about making this a movie. They would go in all different directions with all these different characters. They would try to set it up. up so there's a cliffhanger for for season two or whatever um Kyle first of all you would want to be in that Netflix show I'm assuming if they brought this back as you know my acting background would come

out the reason it's so personal you're talking about the early 90s too I understand I was a freshman in high school in 1993 all my freshman teammates and I went to the movie theater to see this wearing our jerseys like the shitty freshman jerseys that are just old varsity jerseys yeah we go we're seeing it in the theater it's the coolest thing we've ever seen. Everybody, we're all 14, losing our mind about Latimer. When we walk out from the movie, the varsity team is waiting to get into the later showing in their uniform. And it was, and the fucking Libertyville team was there. And they were our rivals. And it felt like North Suburban jets and sharks. And the program was a very important thing for high school

football players. Really, I think the legacy of it was for the next several years, every single high school team that you would play against, whether you lost or whether you won. In the handshake, line, there'd be one asshole with his face painted in the skull like Latimer. And he thought he was such a badass and he had a neck roll and he wore 56. It set off like a renaissance for face painting. And that's really the legacy. Do Roussel never face painted? No.

I mean, we were big on eye black and earramural league. But, you know, I mean, this is where I'm the poser in the group here. I mean, Kyle's actually playing. No, no. I'm right here. Yeah. I know. But Kyle's playing for Princeton being recruited by programs.

and I'm at UVM bragging about intermurals because we have no football team. So, and I mean, at this point, I was, I was just so excited that this just wasn't the, I mean, I think it bears like repeating, we weren't really getting these kinds of football movies. So it gave us a little remember Titans at the end, but it did set out to talk about the NCAA,

to talk about injuries costing somebody. It was about cheating, which I would point out, I don't know what kind of cheating they were doing at ESU, but based on Max home and even, even, you know, Joe's dad's pad sucked balls. They clearly were not cheating the level that we're aware of cheating now. Like it might have been a handshake, but nobody was getting a house out of the deal.

Well, and then you got sexual assault, you have PDs, you have a lot of stuff that anyone who was going to college at the time, or even in high school, these were all issues that were everyday issues. Every program had somebody doing something. I look at it like in the sports movie landscape, which we've covered before in this pod, but there's this whole era that starts with the longest yard and basically goes all the way throughout, say, Hoosiers.

So it's like 74 to 86. And every sport is covered, every underdog theme is hit, and we kind of perfect the 1.0 version of the sports movie. And then around the early 90s, it's like the people who love those sports movies are going, wait, let's take this another level. And then there's this really interesting new wave, right? So you got the program in Blue Chips, which is directed by William Friedkin, who's really

fascinated with a lot of the same issues that this movie has, right? Coaches taking advantage of the rule. Coaches bending the rules. Coaches doing things they know aren't right just for wins. Athletes starting to leverage the system for their own benefit and things like that. And it leads to this kind of more sophisticated way of a sports movie where it's like tin cup. he got game where people aren't just doing a sports movie.

They're trying to do more with it. I guess what I'm trying to say is this was a noble effort. This guy, David Ward, the guy who directed this, he also directed both major leagues. And he is basically like, college football's fucked up. There's an entertaining movie in here. I'm just going for it. What's interesting is nobody has really pulled it off since, right?

Well, I think, I don't know how you guys, the way you're describing it, Bill, I feel like in a lot of ways this was the grunge sports movie. like everything in music was fuck my dad fuck my life i hate him and as much as i agree with you ryan that there's some huge disney moments this movie goes for it like with a terrifying rape roydrage scene and like yeah like the lead guy is a is a drunk loser suicidal like it gets dark as hell in like the black hole sun type of way which i really respected because i'm sure that wasn't good for box office i'm sure it wasn't good for critics they could have made a safe cutesy college

football movie where they go to the Rose Bowl at the end. This thing is dark as hell, and that's why I think I like it. Well, you left out the linebacker who's that they win the big game and it just cuts to him turning the radio off with his leg and a cast and it's like, yeah, you're never getting out of that house. There's some genuinely moving moments too.

Like, that thing that Alvin Mack does with the door knocker, like, that still makes me tear up. I'm going to buy you the house to go with it. That's a well-written sentiment from the guy. I love it. No, there's great parts as far as like the coach, James Khan, having to sit there and justify and like the board asks for his word of the backup QB

who's sleeping with his daughter and forced her to take a test on his behalf so he could cheat. And James Kahn needs him. And he's just looking at him. He's like, yep, I absolutely vouched. And he hates him. Like, that's a really great scene.

You're right about Alvin giving his mother of the door knocker that says Mac on it. Like all these little scenes. I guess what I'm saying is because it took so many swings at the real shit, it was kind of weird to go, oh, you guys are remember the Titan in us right now at the very end.

to be like, hey, everything now is full circle. When it's still, you're right, it has some dark moments. I mean, the scene with Joe going back to see his dad, who actually is an incredible actor, that scene where he goes back and he's passed out with a dart and he lights up another cigarette. What they didn't throw you out? Yeah. He's like, how come you never come to see my games?

He's like, I don't want you getting all excited and fucking it up. You know, I mean, but he like this whole thing, or especially when he has the line, He's like, well, that's what they do in rehab. They get you thinking about things you can't solve. And you're like, Jesus, dude. So he's just laying into his kid, but it's an amazing scene as the smoke is in the background. So you're absolutely right that they,

they didn't package it that certain way. It was just always watching it again. I was like, oh, they kind of had to. Like at the end, it's like, all right, what do we do to kind of make one of these things a happy storyline and, you know, whatever. Well, it was a long stretch of sports movies there where they felt obligated to have the good guys

who went in the end. And really this movie should have ended with them losing on the last play. Right? It should have been Omar Epps catches the touchdown, but there's a flag. There's been a holding. It's been called back. And then on the next play, he gets sacked. And it's just everyone walks off sadly, almost like how Friday Night Lights ended.

The Peter Bird movie. The loss to Michigan was devastating, though, Bill. They lose the Heisman. You lose everything. Griffin loses his girl. It's devastating loss to Tim Weyman. Tim Weyman? By the way, the cast.

thing in this is really good for a sports movie, okay? Because the guys are huge. We can talk about the hitting later and all that kind of stuff. They put some big dudes out there. That offensive lineman that runs around with Joe the whole time is great because he's enormous. It actually makes Joe look smaller on the field because, and he's not that small guy. But then to decide to go with a mall cop as the Heisman, you know, enemy at Michigan, Wayman. And by the way, Michigan said, there's a backstory about using the likeness here. Michigan was like, you can use us, but we have to win. Interesting.

That's classic Michigan. It's the most Michigan thing ever. I don't know if they actually count. Michigan may count it as one of their wins all time. That's unbelievable. Yeah. Well, on the flip side of that, too, like, you know who comes off terribly in this movie is Mississippi State?

What do they get out of this? Because they get their complete asses kicked. The running back looks like a huge pussy. Latimer destroys them. And I look into this. Like, in the early 90s, Mississippi State was doing fine. Like the 91 Bulldogs team,

they were going to bowls. They're clipping along. So do they not get script approval about, all right, you can use Mississippi State, but what is going to be happening here? Because we want the Iowa package. Fuck Iowa.

We want the run over ladder on the goal line. No, they got their heads taken off. I think you lost your bonnet, babe. And that sucks for them. Right. I think the AD gets fired like a week after the movie comes out. Because they're like, wait, what happened here?

Well, that was the back story, too. Like they asked Alabama, they said no. Oklahoma was like, no. Mississippi State apparently said yes. Michigan said yes, but only if we win. And then Schembeckler's on the call. And then, you know, look, I don't know what conference they're supposed to be in because I went back and double-checked. Yeah, Mississippi State, Michigan, Iowa, and then they opened the movie with Georgia Tech with apparently the worst lighting in the history of a college football game. And then that's who they finish up with. So it feels like Georgia

Tech is their rival. I don't know. Maybe ESU's an independent back then. Well, and they're also filming it in South Carolina. Right. But they're, I think, a mid-major. I was confused by it as well. One of the things that really stood out. I don't think they're a mid-major. You didn't get pre-season Heisman hype in the early 90s in a mid-major. As I cover hype.

Yeah, no way. Well, so, but then they would have been in one of the big conferences. They would have mentioned that. I don't know what conferences they're in because they had lost two or four. And at the end, James Kahn's like, oh, we're still alive for a conference championship. You're like, whoa, what conferences is this? It's almost like it was a sports movie where they didn't figure that part out. One thing that was really special about this movie at the time in 93

was the football scenes and how realistic they were because you go back to longest yard in 74, which I really like the longest yard football scenes. I'm pro. I like the wide camera. It really looks like football. And then as it kind of went along, North Dallas 40,

I thought they put the cameras on the field. Everything was too close. And that led to basically a 20-year run of people fucking up football scenes and movies. We want to talk about Johnny Be Good with Anthony McAaw. Oh, terrible. The program, they go and they use NFL films guys. They use long lenses and real cinematographers.

They really, like, they're like, we're going to have slow motion. We're going to actually have the guys do some of the stuff and then use stunt doubles when we need them. And then everything culminates in the last game. Those guys ran out at halftime on one of these games, and they had a script and they followed it. And they executed like seven, eight plays in a row, but they're all hitting the shit out of each other. And in the research, which I know Rosillo, I know he loves this stuff, so you picked it up.

These guys were getting the shit kicked out of each other. They're doing basically, they weren't doing two days. They were doing like eight a days. They're filming for 12 hours a day. Realistic, all of them are banged up by the end of it. I'm guessing it wouldn't fly nowadays. But Kyle, like imagine being on the set and you're just playing football.

for three straight weeks, and they're like, hey, man, don't ease up. We want this to seem real. How do you even do that? Dude's making scale. There's about three-name actors and then a bunch of like shitty extra players and hour after hour of hitting. Because you mentioned it, Bill, after this, like, all the movies were doing it. We got Friday Night Lights, like the movie Invincible with Walberg, he gets the shit kicked

out of him, and all the hits are really great. I will say all the attention they put into the hitting, and it looks beautiful and it's NFL films. I don't know why they didn't just let that lie and just show us this beautiful hitting. To me, one of the most cringeworthy things in the entire movie that drives me crazy is the way that Darnell Jefferson talks to himself as he runs the ball. Perposterous, stupid, childish. He gets the ball and is showtime, baby, right here, right here. You're too slow for me. Grab me again. Like, ludicrous. No one does that. And it's so corny. I die every time. Just let it be silent and beautiful. They blew it in that one. The hitting is,

is the key, though. Like, there's all these sports movies we get mad about throwing motion and all these different things. And by the way, Kane said he was casted and they say, he's like, I didn't know how far I could throw a football.

So he's like, I went out in the Disney lot and threw it 65 yards a couple of times. They're like, you got the part. I'm like 65 yards. Yeah, that seemed high. I flag that as well. Right. Exactly.

But the hitting, when you watch it, as Bill said, they were knocking the shit out of each other. I know. So that part was very believable. The casting, the guys are enormous.

It kept coming up as I'm watching. I'm like, look at 68. Like, who is this guy? Granted, it's early 80, or late 80s, early 90s pad work. So everybody's got the biggest pads ever back then. But what's so funny is they put such an emphasis on everybody knocking the shit out of each other, which they did a great job with. Then there would be moments where you're like, wait, Kane breaks the huddle on four.

Like, on four? He says on four at one point. On four as he breaks the huddle. And there's not one guy to go, eh, you know, and then it's a. 17 step drop for a screen. So as hard as they focused and they deserve a lot of credit, like, hey, let's really hit the shit out of each. And they were.

As Bill says, these guys were really banged up. Latimer thought he was paralyzed at one point for real. He hit like a stinger for a day. Yeah, and he goes, all these guys were big guys, but they didn't really move around all that well. Omar Epps says, you know, I was a Dallas Cowboys fan. I thought I was going to be a member of the Cowboys. It's like, yeah, I could see the second you touch the football on a handoff,

you didn't know what you were doing. So there were things that were great, the great execution of the hit. and the physical nature of the football, but there was some, like, more detailed stuff that it felt like, all right, you kind of let that go. Be gentle with Kyle. I can see the hurt in his eyes right now. Yeah, for sure.

I'll tell you what, though, when you talk about all that hitting, how did our boy Craig Schaeffer hold up because he is skinny as hell in this movie. It bothers me his physique. He has a stunt double. Well, he has a stunt double for some of them, but, like, it bothers me in many scenes

that he is the Heisman quarterback, and he makes Ken Dorsey look like Tim Tebow. He is unbelievably, unfathomably skinny. It's like, Sheffer, this is a role of a lifetime. You're the quarterback with the demons. Can you get in the gym for just a few weeks? You know what I'm talking about that lap, full-down scene. He's got nothing.

I think that's why they rolled up his sleeves in the reverse lap hold-down scene. Yeah, they always cuff them. Terrible. Well, they, for some reason, there's an incredible amount of content about this movie on the internet. There's multiple oral histories. There's a South Carolina oral history just about what it was like, for them to have it.

And in one of the pieces they were talking about, Sheffer was actually pretty good for the most part as a quarterback, except one of the guys was like had a little bit of a weird throwing motion. Like it was a little wonky. So anytime they had a rollout scene, they basically couldn't use it. And I was like, man, tough beat for Sheffer. Because he was probably feeling great at the end of this, right?

He's telling everybody he could throw 65 yards. Yeah, the 65 yard thing stood out immediately. And also, as you guys both know, but the way he would set up play action is just he would like invert the play action maybe guys should start doing that I don't know maybe he was ahead of everybody fair you mentioned Omar Epps

so this is the incredible Omar Eps run of Juice the program Major League 2 higher learning ER scream to the wood love and basketball he was in three fairly iconic I still like Major League 2

three fairly iconic sports movies and did the rarely seen baseball, football, basketball, Troika, which is really like Koster territory. Because Kostner, you know, did the baseball and the golf where he tried to cross over. But this is like the three movies thing. So you mentioned he doesn't look believable as a running back. I also think he's really believable as an athlete.

But what was Kyle, you were running back in Princeton, right? So what was he missing? What would running back? coach Kyle Bran have told him. Well, first of all, Bill also in that run, he also was track and field in higher learning. Yeah, higher learning, track and field as well. You know, physically he had it and he's got the cool look and he's got, it's all about the aesthetics. He's got the back flap, the bottom of his shoulder pads, which was really cool back then.

It was like work done. It was just like, it's the corny narration that he has. And they do this whole thing. They have a whole storyline about ball security and hold on to this foot. and high and tight and James Con. And then at the end of the game, A, he fumbles again just because Ray Griffin misses a block. He completely loses it. And when he's running after the screen, it's full on out here like Walter Payton in 1987.

It's awful. I mean, it's absolutely terrible. Like, Coach Frank Winner should bench him, not Ray Griffin, bench him because he fumbles in the game. It's terrible. It bothers me as a viewer. Kyle, Kyle, Kyle. Yeah.

Did you make out with your host the first weekend you were on campus? No, dude. I didn't go to ESU. My host was a guy named Seth, bro. I barely made out, like, in the first four years at campus. I wish I did. No, there were no Tiger Getters. There was no marching band.

Tiger Gettors. I didn't have the Jesus Shuttleworth boobs around me. None of that stuff. No nudity in this movie. No. It's shocking. I think it's a PG-13 movie. I can't remember.

I forgot to look that up. The one O'MR-Up's football thing that I really didn't like is the last play where, I don't know what pass route he's running. He basically runs to the end zone and stops. Yeah. And then does this see ya and does this 180 spin move toward the corner. And I just have never seen that work in a football game ever. I'm pretty sure the debacks ready for him to go left to right.

I probably would have done another take of that. I got to ask you guys both. What was your identity as a football team? Great question. Because you have a Heisman caliber quarterback. You only throw to the running backs. I don't remember any throws of the wide receivers. You've got a Heisman caliber quarterback again,

and you have a running back controversy. You are big along the lines. I never, maybe they had a bad secondary. We didn't hear about them at all. You know, they throw the running back a lot. Where was the tight end character? No tight end. Like a security blanket guy.

That guy just decided that to have them in the movie. And then they're running Griffin on full back dive, 15-yard passes. Yeah. Yeah, it's the rare eye formation throwing offense. You don't see that a lot. No, it was a lot of pro-style. And they would shift into the eye, too, which is like really corny early in the 90s. And the play that kills me is the play against Michigan, which is the most telegraphed interception

of all time. Joe King calls it like, you know, dogey's right, tailback streak in which Darnel Jefferson runs right through the line and is just a streak pattern. The safety sits there and picks it. It's a terribly unsophisticated offense. I think the heart and soul of this team was defense. ESU is built on defense. Right.

And then they lose their middle linebackers all over. So we mentioned Omar Epps, who distinctly makes us a 90s movie. Then you have Christy Swanson at a golden, golden, golden time of her career. And at a time when she really meant a lot to guys in the general 10-year, 10-year Adrian. She's coming off Buffy. She's in the chase with Charlie Sheen. Love it. Which features a sex scene where she just mounts him in the car.

car as they're going 80 miles an hour and they have a slow motion sex scene, then the program, and then higher learning. And then, like, a lot of times this happens, it kind of falls apart. But she dyes her hair. More importantly, lefty tennis player, there's a Southpaw thing going out with Christy Swanson. Let me tell you something. It was all working for me living in Boston in 93. I was all in. Priscilla, what were your thoughts? It reminds me of the PED part of the storyline because she kind of looks like boo from Teen Wolf if she did a cycle. Interesting. Good callback to a previous rewatchables.

How did you feel about the tennis, Kyle? It was a wardrobe choice. It was higher level than I was expecting. Yeah, it was okay. I kept being distracted that Christy Swanson is wearing like really high-wasted cut-off jeans shorts to play tennis in. Yeah, she played jeans shorts. Yeah.

I think that I would like to be on it. Yeah, it might be. The psychology inside, I think her name is. Camille character is fascinating because like Joe Kane from the onset like treats her like shit like completely do you follow your daddy's BMW your daddy this almost kills her calls her three in the morning is like great I'll pick you up at sick click and she's just swinging from what's going on with her yeah right and it's like oh by the way do you want to go to like a local dive bar and get weird I'm also like I know I personally have not hung out at enough quarries I just haven't

and yet he's like hey no let's just go jump off. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of red flags here earlier with this relationship. And she still, you know, she likes the bad boy. She could lie to her. She was lying herself early. She was like, I don't date football players. Like, this guy's about to win the He's sitting the wrong way in a lap pull down. He reps out three. Do you want to go out? And, you know, she's denying it. But do we need a second racquetball scene, though, after the tennis scene? All thoughts. Great question. Great question. There was going to be a third squash scene and they cut it, too.

They need a billiard scene after. Yeah. She makes a big play. of I don't date guys like you and then falls for every trick in the book for the rest of the movie. It's like, I'm going to be a drunk loser who treats you terribly. She's like, I'm in. Yeah, Bill, not only every trick in the book. The corneous dumbest bullshit I've ever seen,

which is when you go away to rehab and don't take her call for a month, you come back and do this six pack of Sprite gag, which is like some dumb shit someone would do on the Bachelor when they got out of the limo to break the ice with the Bachelorette. The Sprite six-pack just killed her. I feel like they were in bed together 10 minutes for that. It's terrible. She's actually a

terrible character. I don't like her. Yeah, she's a bad character. Rissilo, did you ever pull the, I'm going to want, our date isn't going well, I'm going to wander on these train tracks and scare you to the point where you think I've just been murdered to try to revive the date? I had a few, yeah, I've definitely had a few nights that haven't gone great, but I would, I would say that the, hey, you want to just, that's the best. It's like, I almost killed myself in front of a train, just blowing off some steam. Mid-2000s, he turns into a vampire in this movie. Remember vampires are just hot. We couldn't get enough of them. And he starts to like, his eyes start turning.

And then I think he would have like in 2008 if this movie happened then, he would fly away. That's a great point. One other thing I had was the ESU Timberwolves. Yeah. So let's just talk through this. They're playing at Wolfden Stadium, by the way, which I thought was actually pretty good. I don't know if anyone's stolen that since. But so ESU, we assume that stands for Eastern State University.

I think so, yeah. Yeah, ESU. And we assume they're playing somewhere in the South Midwest kind of-ish area. So where do you get the timber wolves from? Timberwolves is definitely like high north borderline Canada. Well, scholars will tell you, as Western Kentucky was settled, a lot of the timber industry would be on rivers throughout that. area that actually made its way down to southern Georgia and in thus areas.

So that's where you think the Timberwolves came from? I'm totally fucking with you, right? I was hoping it was in Minneapolis. That was only my guess. But if it was in Minneapolis, it would be way colder. Yeah. So it's just, as you get late in the season. We see their last game of the prior season, and it appears to be in a driving rain.

There's no cold factor at all. Yeah, but they have a different color uniform. They're in whites in that game. But you can't see it because they shoot in the same feeling. as the Miami Sharks in any given Sunday. It's literally the darkest scene ever. You're like, this program sucks. We're like, we're going to play some night games

that you can't see. It's kind of part of our offense. And the Timberwolves thing, it feels like they come up with that late because nobody decided to just shorten it to the T-Wolves. Nobody's calling them the Timberwolves. Nobody's ever said Minnesota Timberwolves ever. I think the wolf part of it, though, played.

Well, I agree. The way the crowd did this. And apparently they did a lot of that footage at halftime of South Carolina game for one of them. So that was why you got those real, fan reactions. You can actually see fans as they're showing it. Like, they know they're going to be in a movie. So there'll be a couple guys who are just doing the dumbest shit. And it must be hilarious for those guys to go back and watch this movie 25 years later and see themselves.

So if let's all make a guess. If you had to say what state was ESU in? Final answer, what is it? I'm going to go. I think it's the state of Georgia. A little south, warm weather at the end, football crazy, recruiting hotbed. I think the state of Georgia. What do you have, Versilla? Yeah, I don't think, I don't think Joe's family, I don't think he's the kind of guy that was going to get on a plane. And then when you look at Mack's house, so it's going to be deeper south. It just has to be.

Yeah, but Ryan, he gives his dad a plane ticket to come to the game at the end. So we'd have to fly to it, right? So he lives a plane right away from campus. Yeah, but that's because he doesn't have a license. His dad doesn't have a license at this point. So the only way, so it could be a 30-minute flight. That's true. I think Georgia or Mississippi.

Okay. It feels a little like Mississippi. I mean, Max House looks like where they declared like the start of the Civil War. You know? Yeah, it's very antiquated. It's like a lean two. Yeah. I mean, that house is, it starts.

It's like after they got done with that, they shot a horror movie in there. So I don't, I don't, it feels deep south. I think Mississippi, I did a drive-through Mississippi once. It reminded me in Mississippi a little bit. But then again, I don't know. because none of the guys have accents, no the townies have accents. Right.

So the problem is there's no southern accents, and they're called the Timberwolves. Yeah. And if they're in Mississippi, that makes no sense to me. So I don't know. Maybe they wanted to specifically make it so it wasn't in a state

by just confusing us with red herrings left it right. Also, I think there's no Timberwolves anywhere in college football, so maybe that played a role. They didn't want to double up and be, you know, the tigers or the fighting this. Like it was just vacant. So like Timberwolves, that's not going to work. Yeah, but I mean,

you got the wolf. Puck, NC State, this whole thing. I really think we might be missing something historically with the timber industry. I just think it's worth one more time at least talking out there. Any loggers out there listening, please tweet us and let us know. Would it got maybe Cheetahs if they had asked me. ESU Cheetahs. ESU Cheetahs.

It would be great. I feel like Cheetahs has just been an undervalued sports nickname. I don't know where people are on that. All right. So the program made $20 million budget made $23. Okay. Sounds like a win to me. Yeah, good.

probably lost money then. Roger Ebert, three stars. I'll take it. Yes. He said, quote, by the film's end, I found myself

simultaneously hoping that ESU would win its big game and that the school would pull the plug on its football program. I guess that's how I was supposed to feel. It's a perfect review. He's something up great. And then Omar Epp said,

obviously these guys, it gets brought up to them over and over again for the rest of their lives. Omar Epp said, the program has a very very very defined audience. There's no in between. The people that talk about that movie, it's very personal. Like, quote, that movie right there, that was my joint. So basically, that's Kyle Brand. That's me. If you saw Omar Epps, you were just immediately accost him about the program.

And I love a lot of his work, but I wouldn't be, I wouldn't call him Omar. I would call him Darnell. And I would say, Darnell, you're a great actor, but indomitably going to be number one. And then he would agree and he would get it. But honestly, Bill, the Latimer factor, looms large in the cult following. And that's, I feel like it's, it's like 80% of why I love the movie is because of Steve Latimer. All right, so I have him

coming up for what stage is the best. We'll hold that thought. We're going to take a break. We're new the categories. He's, by the way, Latimer also in Woods Age the worst, just to be clear. Yeah. He really runs the what's aged gamut. Anyway, we're taking a break. Come back. Don't you think some once in a blue moon

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which includes Darnell's first run in the fumble. The coach's iconic, are you hurt or are you injured? question, which really made me reconsider everything I ever thought about pro sports and college sports and just how I feel about sports in general. And it's something I've actually said to my daughter. It works, doesn't it work? A higher in college athlete, yeah. And she's like... Did she get it? Yeah, it's like, my knee hurts. And I was like, are you hurt or are you injured? Jefferson, are you injured or are you hurt? What is that me?

Well, if you hurt, you can still play. If you're injured, you can't. So are you hurt? I think I'll just hurt. That's good. And she was like, fuck you, dad. Yeah, she did. But isn't that a Parcell's thing?

Isn't that one of the many? I don't know. I mean, he gets credit for a lot of quotes. Some of Parcell's quotes, I would actually say, like, over time, haven't aged that well. But that was, no, seriously, there's some Parcell's ones who are like, you guys keep repeating it. And I don't even think it's that true. But, I mean, I guess Parcell's had the one where he goes to the kid, he's like, is he hurt? He's like, well, he doesn't have to play.

He just has to kick. But, I mean, the hurt. hurt or injured thing I had heard prior to this, no? Yeah, it's good. It's well, it's well done for the movie. I was associated with the movie, but it probably came before. And you think it's over, and it's like, no, this scene's not over yet. Guns and Roses comes in.

Welcome to the jungle. And now all of a sudden, we're in the pit and people are hitting the shit out of each other. And then it goes right to Latimer. Then locker room, everyone's like, icing. They're recovering from the practice. And he's fucking pressing 465 in the weight room. Ah! And one of the coaches says it's not that hard to gain 35 pounds.

Shit, Vladimir's an animal all of a sudden. He's got to be on something. Steroids. How can you always think my guys are the ones that juicing anyway? He's on the punt return team for three years. Then he gains 35 pounds of rip and one summon and attitude to go with it. Tell me. We're not doctors.

The NC2A has a testing program for this kind of thing. I suggest we let the handle it. And it's not that hard to gain 35 pounds over summer if he hit the gym record. This is an unassailable five minutes. Almost perfect, I would say. I don't even know what I would add. Ryan? No, I mean, he does it clean and jerk and then throws 315 down and kicks it.

And he starts like doing this spastic thing over the top of it. Like he's mad at the weight, which is, you know, I think what everybody's ultimate goal is when they're of the wait room, get mad at it. And he's incredible. And then, you know, he starts headbutting cars and bleeding, which apparently was what a real guy did at South Carolina. There was some Sports Illustrated article in 1988 and the writer saw that and was like, I want to include, like, he was this tragic figure of a steroid abuser in college football. And instead, like a lot of writers, he goes, tragic, this guy's amazing. Like, I want him, I want this character in the movie. I always felt like the first Latimer scene where he's at the dive bar, which they do a great

job with that. Like to express a little bit of Joe's drinking dependency. It's like, all right, we've got a picture of beer and he just goes to the waitresses, like two tequila shots. They're both for me. And that's how I'm going to get my night started. And I almost think it takes a little too long to also notice that Latimer here is thrown on 35 pounds of muscle. But it's like, oh, oh, by the way, dude, how's it going? You're enormous now. Because he's just sitting there. You know what's funny? It's for the longest time, I thought he was Sting, the wrestler. He looks like him. So I was like, oh, that's what happened.

That's what happened to Latimer. He became Sting. And you're like, no, that's not what happened. I had this for Wood's age the best, but for me personally, but there's a specific steroids era where the, I don't know whether they're, they're probably way worse for you. I'm guessing they were back then. But because you could see in the wrestling physiques, too.

It's the ultimate warrior was somebody who had a similar physique like this in the late 80s. But where Latimer's body just doesn't happen. now in 2020 because even if you're doing the steroids, they're just better. I don't think you're fucking just jacked like he was. So you look at him and it's almost like he's an oddity. It's hard to almost listen to the dialogue in that scene because you're like, Jesus Christ, look at Latimer. What's going on? Guys jacked. They're distracting. Every second that he's on screen that they're not talking about Latimer,

you're like, talk about that guy. That's the scene you're talking about Ryan. Like, okay, so Joe Cain's looking at the fucking magazine. Meanwhile, there's a dude who has an onk now. necklace, which was so hot in 93, like a tie-dye shirt, this badass like Bon Jovi Crossroads-type haircut, which works, a bandana and beers. And you're like, never mind the star quarterback. I don't hear about him. And you're dead right, Bill, the one thing you mentioned is one of the smallest details of this movie that is so identifiable to football players at any level is after the ferocious

practice with the guns and roses when they're just laid out. They're lying on the floor of the locker, using their pads as pillows, and they're just dead. Every kid has done that in two days in high school or anything. And then the contrast to go to the Royd Hulk in the wait room. And Rosillo, it's 315 overhead stand-up press. And what's staggering about it is the scene in which they're talking about him goes on for fucking ever. I think he gets 24 reps of 315 over his head.

I think it's a full two dozen. And then that thing where he kicks it, like you said, we used to fucking do that in the weight room and we would drop the weights. We would kick it. and like we're like, we want to be Latimer. It's so magical, I'm telling you. I love it. Yeah, I like when he's feuding with the weights.

Yeah, he's busy with those weights. Those weights disrespecting him. But the thing is, it's like they do such a good job with him and his lines. So it feels like there's never any wasted Latimer's scenes. So I know, you know, Dion Waiters and all that stuff that we'll get to. Yeah. I mean, there's one other potential candidate for the whole thing. But as you open the pod, Kyle, he, like that moment where they're trying to make it

dramatic the night before the big game what does it mean for you the shot the music and his speech he nails it it's the battle going to war with the other guys hanging together having our own dorm staying in hotels the night before the games setting ourselves apart

being different than everybody else having a chance to be somebody to do something that people look up to you for. Your strength, your courage. Not everybody can play football. We're the lucky ones. Like, I get goosebumps because, like, that is the part.

Look, I'll tell you right now, I love more than anything I've gotten to do in my life in being at these college stadiums. And coming out of the tunnel when I don't even play and being at an SEC game on a second. Saturday night and coming out of that tunnel and looking at the kids that actually get to do it and earn pads and like, hey, we're going to go to battle tonight and let's see what happens. Like, I get chills for something I don't even get to do.

And they sell that part of it really, really well in the movie. They do. I had that as a rewatchable scene. So you just did it. So we don't need to do that. No, no, no. It's fine. Next one I had was when Darno loses his football in class, which is just, you know,

just hilarious and it's just a scramble, but it's immediately followed by Latimer finding out he's starting and the iconic, yeah, place at the table! Starting defense! Place at the table! It's just like, I don't know why that isn't just on the internet

all the time. It just seems like that should be on Twitter every day in some form. It should be the constant meme of that place at the table. There are so many things in this movie that were instantly duplicated by every dumbass high school. coach and carried the football around all day was totally one of them.

Like, there's thousands of kids who were told to carry the football around. And I always found a fascinating about the place at the table scene. How dated is it that they type and print out the starting lineup and tape it to the glass window? I don't think that happens at all. You know you're the starter from meetings with coaches and practice time. Like, there's not like, what did you get on the final exam? That's what it is like, yeah.

It's a really preposterous way of announcing it. but it makes for a badass scene when he traces that finger over. Holy shit. Next one, the first Mississippi State game, which has the back fumble, which just destroys the guy, the Latimer helmet rip on the sack,

which I think it's like a 50-yard penalty. And then- Kyle Turley? Yeah, Kyle Turley. Remember, was it Aaron Brooks? Yeah, he threw his helmet. He ripped it off, and Brooks' body is bending backwards.

Good call. And Alvin Mack, this is when we're like, oh, this guy, when he's doing that. Hey, 23. Hey, 23. Don't think I don't recognize you, you poop butt motherfucker? Hey, pay attention when I'm talking to you, nigger. What? You're the guy who shot my mother, aren't you?

Shut up, man. You knew I never knew your mother. You were trying to steal a fucking car, you, cocksucker. You didn't think I was going to find you, did you? But I got you now, nigger. I'm going to bust your gut open and watch you die. And he's just like, he's basically Mr. T 2.0, just demolishing these dudes. And I just love Alvin Mack.

And it's funny, that guy was a former football player who this was really it for them. It was like he was in a million things, but I thought he was really good at this movie. And it was a good part, but he was really good. Yeah, just especially too, like, because I feel like we've done so much Latimer because he's kind of the headliner of the side guys. But Mac had a tough spot here. You know how cheesy that could have come off for somebody else, but he moved around because you're like,

he played some college football. He moved around like a football player. Even in some of the research, he was laughing being like, dude, you're not supposed to hit this much. And we're hitting all day long. And he's like,

and Latimer was out there wanting to play. And he's like, you could just sort of tell like, yeah, you're really big, but you don't understand the movement. So he's going to move the right way. He's going to kind of come up and down the line.

And then he's also going to come up with these heckles that were all very original and funny. And everybody wanted to say to each other after the fact. Like, you're the one that, you're the one that shot my mama. And you're like, what? You don't want to knock down my baby sister. Yeah.

And it just, even though it was, it was like exactly, I think that's actually a very delicate thing and a hard thing to execute to make it seem cool and original. And he was great with it. Yeah. Yeah. Next one is the second loss without Kane. When, when Matt gets hurt, Latimer gets bowled over.

It's rewatchable from the standpoint of, it's one of the famous scenes for the movie. I personally, It actually hurts to watch because Ladimer getting pushed over is, you know, it's painful. That's our guy trying to get his shit together. This is kind of an unanswerable question, but what is the deal with Alvin Mack's injury? And why is it so bad that he will never play football again? He gets upended from behind. It's not a violent contact.

And then so, okay, he breaks his leg. This was in the era where Jerry Rice had complete reconstructive knee surgery and came back and play. Why is it just a rap for Alvin Mack? Why can't they operate? see, we have them. So it's hard. Well, but it's hard to notice. And I think you notice it more on the, on like a 50 foot screen. But his leg is like basically turned. Right. And if you, if you look, it's like up to his knee is going one way. And then his foot's like basically upside down. And I think if you saw in the theater, you'd be like, oh yeah, that guy's never playing again.

I think on TV it's a little tougher. In 93, that was a rap? Because like we're seeing Alex Smith now and they did all those miracles on him. I mean, that's Jack Prescott. He's going to get a $150 million. I mean, his ankle. I think it's a really good question. But maybe they just knew Mac. I don't like their medical team. Stretcher, five minutes later, you think?

The last rewatchable, the entire second half, I just think you got to lump it all together. It includes the James Con mini pep talk. James Con has some issues in this movie. We'll get to. Ray Jefferson finally throwing a good block. Lattermer's third one stop with the snot bubbles, which became a huge thing from this movie. And I don't know how they did it special effects-wise,

but it's really great. The James Kahn kind of staring them down for a second and doing the... I know you're still on the juice face, but then kind of just lets it go because they're about to win. Darnell has a great punt return that it seems like Omar Epps actually pulled off. We can talk about whether he was realistic as a runner,

but he definitely caught a punt and executed whatever the script was to go 50 yards and took a pretty big hit at the end of it. It's just realistic. Darnell has the big catch and then the biggest quandary of the whole movie is how do the fans not charge the field?

What the fuck was going on? Was it not safe? How did they miss that? Kyle, what happened there? How do they not realize they shouldn't have done that? I think it's a fatigued fan base who is about to go to the Pincetia bowl and they're a little tired of

this team and they you know Joe Kane only played the second half and looked like shit for most of it and they're kind of over it and they just want to go drink at the frat houses this is not an undefeated season I think they're over it fair um I also think you have to back up a little bit off the other thing because after that Michigan loss think about the week this program had and imagine how that would be covered today good call so that night you have Latimer with the assault okay and you'll notice later on when Latimer is getting his urine changed he's in a different apartment, which leads me to believe that his roommates at the time were like, you're going to have to get a single.

This is how you're going to act. Or there's another theory that's out there. Here, by the criminal. We can't love with you anymore. Latimer already had a single because no one wanted to live with him. And he was trying to hook up with the girl, you know, obviously it's a movie. But that scene is at somebody else's apartment. It's just that party.

So that's the party, which you'll also notice, I believe one of the athletes from Camp Buy Me Love, apparently when he graduated from high school in Scottsdale, went to E. which I just thought was worth pointing out. Yeah. And then Latimer goes in after getting in trouble, it's an unbelievable delivery, the way he delivers the line when they're like, you're going to miss three games.

He's like, why so many, coach? Three games. Why so many? So many. You're lucky. I didn't spend you for the whole season. Three games. Three games.

Why so many? And then you've got, you've already got the Bobby situation where he's sleeping with your daughter and then she took a test for him. Okay. Yeah. And then your star quarterback who's off the rails goes to a dive bar on a different night. And there's no way that Joe Kane is afraid of 50-night drafts on a Wednesday. So I'm assuming that's midweek.

But yet, Darnel's is only friend that goes out with him, which doesn't make any sense because one, the white, black thing, college football teams, there's no way a black freshman's only friend would be the white junior senior quarterback. A lot of it's positional. A lot of it is by race at times. And it also is kind of the Barry Bond theory? You're like, is Joe have no other friends on the team where the only guy that likes him is a guy who's a freshman and has only been there for a couple months? Then he gets into a bar fight and then he gets into a DUI.

So that's a tough week for any program. Plus during a time when people cared about the Hizman. Yeah. So the 1993 Hizman candidate that gets a tough. in the DUI bar fight thing would have been a massive story. And then rehab, which, yeah. You know, I don't know, I don't know what that does to somebody's, I don't know what it does to somebody's draft stock.

I imagine Andrew Locke probably could have got busted for crack three times. It's still gone first. But I don't know if Joe Kane couldn't. What do you have for most rewatchable scene, Kyle? It's, it's the thing. It's strangely enough, it's not the game. It's the practice sequence that you talked about into the players, into the workout.

But I will say a nitpick here. I don't like that they use Welcome to the Jungle. That is an 80s song. That should have, this, that sequence should have had a Pantera song or a helmet or something early 90s. Danzig? Absolutely. I feel like the G&R was like six classes of ESU before.

There was a little dated, but I still think of-Bend doctors, maybe. Sure. Yeah, they can't be wrong. Little Miss can't be wrong. Yeah, good bad. What do you have for most rewatchable, Rosillo? It's the fourth and goal. It's, it's Iowa.

It's, it's, it's Latin America. I know where you're, so I'm not going to make up that it's a different one because that one, it stings every time I watch it. I have the, I really like the last 15 minutes of this movie. And it's honestly not on enough. I don't know. You can find it. You got to rent it on different places.

But I just don't know why it's on, not on TV all the time. Special category, just for Rissillo. Oh, great. Before we get to what stage the best. There's a lot of weightlifting in this movie, an in anordinate amount. We get to see Latimer. We get to see Christy Swanson do leg lifts. We'd see whatever Joe Kane was doing.

I just wanted your ratings for each character. What you saw, scouting report. What went wrong? I know this is such an important theme for you. I can't believe I'm going to admit this, but I'm just going to do it for full transparency here. Kyle sent me a text earlier today. It was like, hey, I'm thinking about going sleeveless.

And I was just like, whatever. Yeah. And I was like, yeah, well, whatever. Like I thought about going shirtless last night, but I didn't want to say it. So then I was messing with Kyle and I put a ton of weight on today just to screw around and see how I would do. And I was making a video for Kyle and I lost the right side of it and had to dump. You dumped? I had a dump. Are you all right? Yeah, I'm fine. But it was I was sitting there going, you idiot. You put on more than you've done

in a while and you were going to make a video for your buddy Kyle to show how pumped up you were on chest day to watch the program and do this for watchable. And I had to like clip it on the left side. And for whatever reason, I just was weak today. I wasn't as strong as I thought I was going to be because I was so pumped up. I was sweating. I had like, I was like, I feel really good. And it was over 300 pounds.

And I was like, oh, man, you actually aren't going to get this. And it's on the video that I was going to send Kyle. And obviously I had to delete the whole thing. He sent me a still pick. I was like, what the hell is this? This is the foreplay. Let's get to the main event. Let's see you.

We could have promoted the podcast with the video. Yeah. What you're doing? That would have been a great trailer. I've been able to get it before and I thought, oh, yeah, you know what? Let's just throw this on. Ryan, if you need me to lift that weight for you, I can step in. See, that's where I think Kyle probably deserves more credit on this part.

I don't have much of an issue with a lot of the workout stuff. I don't. I mean, look, to sit in a lap, pull down backwards to hit on a girl is a little weird. I'm not a big hit on the girls at the gym kind of guy. I've never really been my move. I'm more about myself there. That's just me. That's just how I roll.

but it was weird behind the next stuff I'm not even 100% sure about I'd say there's a little bit of Latimer on that clean and jerk on the right side that I don't love looks a little loose but he makes it work so who am I and I know the knee rehab

the knee rehab is something Kyle has a problem with yeah I have some issues as well that didn't ring through to me at all I feel like she didn't do any method acting she never had her knee scope just feels like she was just going through the motions that whole scene is awkward as hell well she's got her knee scope

that she's rehabbing, but then plays tennis, which is like one of the hardest sports on your knees. I don't, wait a second. How are you doing all that? This episode is brought to by Whole Foods Market. Spring is here, so celebrate it with fresh, juicy, seasonal produce and some very tasty, limited time flavors. New Whole Foods, Market Peach, Apricot, Rose, Italian soda. Perfect for a picnic or brunch, as is their trending mango, Yuzu chantilly cake. But if you're on the go, new three 365 strawberry pretzels make a great sweet snack. That sounds delicious. Get savings with the yellow sale signs storewide and everyday low prices on 365 brand items. Enjoy the fresh flavors of spring. Save at Whole Foods Market. Snoring, gasping during sleep, feeling fatigued, ask your doctor

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Call 1-800-545-9 or visit Zepbound.lily.com. What stage the best? Latimer, who's also going to come up in What's Age is the Worse. the actor's name is Andrew Brian Nyarski who says every day of my life there's not a day that doesn't go by

where someone doesn't yell place at the table I believe it he has been in a couple other things including higher learning which I he's kind of unrecognizable as a neo-Nazi in that one

I didn't even Van and I when we did higher learning we had an argument because I didn't think it was Latimer and it turned out it was he also he's got a very interesting IMDB there's some

some some stuff in there, including Leatherface in a Texas Chainsaw remake, obviously this was his best role. And I would say like if you're making Mount Rushmore of football movie characters,

he's got to be one of the first four people would mention. If you're like, hey, most distinct character in a football movie, I would say he's top four, right? I think, I look at Latimer, like he's 1990s ogre. Like, he's

That's just that Donald Gibb is ogre. As much as we love Bloodsport, he's ogre. You see this guy, Andrew Bernarski, he is Latimer. It's, he should have switched his name to Latimer professionally and just done movies like this over and over. I would ask you both, you guys, like, I look at Latimer in this role. He's, I think he's a compelling actor. He's a physically amazing guy.

He's sneaky handsome. He's got great hair. Why didn't he start being the lead in like kind of shitty action movies after this? Like, why, why wasn't he? Jason Mamoa or like Loan Joe Menjin in L.O. Like, why couldn't he do it? Because he's got a lot going on for him. Boy, what a great question.

You're just speaking my language right now. I know. Sometimes this happens where you look at like Jean-Claude Van Dam where they just decide, yeah, let's put these guys, let's put this guy in an action movie every year, Chuck Norris. And yet Latimer, nobody put it together where he could have been some cop in L.A. solving there's somebody's killing dead hookers. Latimer's got to find who it is

and he's got to get some curls in. I'm with you. I don't know why he wouldn't have at least laid one movie. Ryan, when he does the scene and he's fighting with Alvin and Alvin's pissed at him for getting butt for steroids and he's just like, well, not everybody has your ability, Alvin. You do what you have to do to play. Like, I feel that.

I think it's a great scene. He can act. He has a look. Like, I don't know why this guy didn't immediately go to action movies. And he just got lost and he's done. It's such a tough lane to fill, though, it is. Like, think of all the guys that you think, like Jeff Speakman, the ultimate weapon, didn't work out.

The perfect weapon, yeah. The perfect weapon, excuse me. Ultimate weapon was still in development, I believe. You know, I've always had this theory about, like, morning shows, network morning shows. Okay. You can be attractive, but you can't be, like, stunning hot. You can't be distractingly hot on a morning show for networks

because it's still about the show. show, which I know sounds nuts because so many people are really attractive that are on these shows. But if you just went like full on Brazilian supermodel, I don't think that would ever happen. So the fact that Latimer is, I think, a terrific actor in this role, he's really good looking. The body's insane. Those guys to have a mechanism built around them, it doesn't play as well. Maybe that's not fair. Maybe it's typecasting. But it doesn't seem like those guys. Like Bruce Willis is more of an action hero, which in comparison doesn't make any sense. But it's like the Peter Parker Spider-Man thing.

It's not about Spider-Man. It's about playing Peter Parker. And I think that ultimately, no matter whatever kind of badass you are or how you look in the body and the superhero part of this, he's a freaking action figure, there's probably just limitations for a guy like that in Hollywood. Well, I think he could have been in Roadhouse, too, is Dalton's younger brother. He's just way more jacks. I bet you, Swayze's like, I don't need this guy around me because I'm 5'8.

Right. True. I can picture him making love to Swayzee in prison, too. I mean, it works. He carved out a really nice... He carved out a really nice career for himself, though, with... If you look at the IMDB, where he's in necessary roughness,

that's where it starts. He's in the program. He's in Street Fighter, higher learning. He was in Heath in Street Fighter. It's great role for him. Any given Sunday. He played Madman Kelly. He's in Roller Ball.

And then everything Cresswith, he plays Leather Face and the Texas Chaitsaw Masker remake. But he kind of was... I don't... know how he wasn't in American History X as one of one of the dudes who was friends with Ed Norton in prison, but for the most part, maybe he had his potential. We're also going to have... Can we time out real quick?

The speed with which Kyle corrected me on the perfect weapon is unbelievable. Maybe the highlight of the entire podcast. I got the power. I love that movie. We have... He's like, oh, the perfect weapon. We have Latimer coming up in Woodsage the worst as well. Don't worry.

Okay. Next, What's Age the Best. Darno versus Ray. I just kind of enjoyed that feud, how distinct the two characters were. Ray, they kind of, it seems like they modeled him after the, I'm not going to fall for the banana

and the tailpipe guy in Beverly Hills cop. It's Carlton versus the Fresh Prince. Right. So they go that lane with him and then Darnell and you're just, nobody on the planet is not rooting for Darnell. And Darnell's kind of a dick, too. Like, he's this upstart dude.

Kind of. I'm taking everybody. I'm taking your girlfriend, your job. But you're rooting for him. It's weird. Well, Hallie Berry sucks. Yeah. You said Hallie Berry sucks in this movie?

She's terrible. It's like, hey, okay, you know, by the way, like we're dating. I'm probably going to marry you. You're going to med school. Okay, we're at a party. He asked me to dance. I say yes and then break up with you. And you better be really hot and have your shit together for you to go outside of a party

and sit there in a park by yourself and have the girl follow you. Most guys that doesn't work for it. Work for Darnell. And poor, poor Ray's like, wait. you're actually doing all of these things. I think it plants a seed for some of Halliberry's struggles with relationships later on in real life. Do you?

I just wonder, Billy, do you think when she was giving the Oscar acceptance speech for Monster's Ball, was she thinking about, what are you more afraid of losing your girl or your position? She was like, that's when I knew I had it inmate who went to it in Oscar. I was meant to do this for a living.

Morewood's stage the best. The cane is able bumper sticker kills me. It's just a great psychag. It's really nice. the uh we talked about all the speeches the speeches we did not talk about the spitting where they uh alvin mac and latimer spitting in each other's mouth which um they both say in the oral histories was was cgied after the fact not real school yeah that's terrible that's bullshit they didn't really do it no they fake spit so i know rsill's disappointing for me um

so stop doing that with my buddies yeah don't do that with your buddies anymore now more than never during COVID. Don't spit in your friend's mouth. Yeah. Morewood's age the best. Yeah. That's just a good point in general. The quote,

when was the last time 80,000 people showed up to watch a kid do a damn chemistry experiment? Just a great, a great assessment of why football is more important at colleges than anybody else. Why just stick that bow tie up your ass? And how about that guy?

How about the bow tie guy? Love that guy. We are an establishment. And whoever the director was like, was like, look, I need 25% more horrible academic. We are not a football vocational school. It's unbelievable.

But this is not a football vocational school. It's an institute of higher learning. It's so funny how they have to have that character in every movie like this. It has to wear a bowtie. Yeah, you can't just like sports. It's like once he happened in Roddy Dangerfield's old school,

they're like, all right, we need new law that guy with the convertible foreign. He has to, he's into antiques. He loves, he never buys paperbacks, that guy. One more, what's age the best for me. Darnhouse theory for how to cheat with Halle Berry, where he says, just go to where white people go.

It's like, we're skating. Now next time we'll go bowling. I just thought it was really cutting edge. What else did you have for what's age the best? Anything? I would just, I don't know if I'm repeating myself, but just the jock, douchebag, adrenaline factor of the whole thing. They get what the young guys want.

And in 93, like in my high school, the goth guys had Trent Reznor and the hippies had fish and the Abercrombie crew had Eddie Vedder. But like the jock asshole Pantera guys, Latimer was their dude. And that was like their, if they had posters of Latimer, they would have put it on the wall. And the way that they maximized that with the fucking face paint and the skull and the Native American and everything. I watched it last night and I felt like I was back in the high school wait room. They just, they nailed it. It was really good. Riscilla, anything else?

just Latimer deciding it's time to get back on the shit and they go a full full ass shot. I mean, I was like, they're in there. Yeah. When he injects himself. Actually, it was a little rough with the nicer TVs now. You could really, it was a lot more of Latimer's ass that I was ready for. A lot of butt.

Yeah. A lot of butt. And it was kind of like a cornfield that hadn't been, you know, harvested yet. So it was, it was abrasive back there. And then he immediately. again. I love every time I get accused of it. I've never done. I've been a frown, buddies of mine that have shot up and whole thing. Not one of my friends has ever been like

injection right into curls 30 seconds later. Right. Of all things, curls with terrible, really dated dumbbells, like that they look like brand from Goonies was using those dumbbells. They're like 20 years old. I don't know why he has those. Needs better weights. What's age the worst? The latter. sexual assault scene was, I hadn't seen this movie in a couple of years. That was way rougher and terrifying than I remember. And that's why when we talk about we love this character, that scene is about as deplorable of a scene for a character that I think all of us like.

And you try to justify it like, oh man, this guy was on so many steroids that it literally turned him in a monster. It's a tough one to come back from. but at the same time, I went to college in the late 80s, early 90s, like this was a real problem and was really, you know, it's still a problem, obviously,

but the lack of awareness for it at the time and especially like with some of the contact sports and football players, stuff like that, on those Saturday nights when people were letting loose, like bad shit would happen. And in a weird way, this was one of the most realistic scenes in the movie. It's just really tough to watch.

I feel like they would handle it in 2020 a lot differently. Like they would have him basically screaming or they, I don't think they would go as far as they went because they would think there's no coming back from this character or for this character. I think in 1993,

I got to say it was, it was unfortunately pretty realistic for stuff that was going on in college campuses. But it's aged to worst because it's really tough to watch. I found it terrifying, and it reminded me almost note for note

of the James Gandalfe Alabama Worley scene. It's just like, oh shit, this is really, and same type of era, too, early 90s, like super intensely violent.

You find yourself watching it, and you know that the friends are coming to stop them, but I haven't seen the movie in years. I was like, go, get in there, guys, get in there. It's a messed up scene.

However, I do think, to your point, Bill, like, that shit was happening, and I think it was accurate and terrifying, but accurate. Yeah. I think also the part where the cast are so small

to really emphasize, like, how scary. the scene was. Like, that was something I didn't really think about the first time I had watched it. You know,

I didn't think about it. And I think we all consume these scenes differently now because the times are just different, which also always leads me to like, how are we supposed to talk about this when you go, are we not going to see scenes like this now? Which I'm not saying that they should never be in movies anymore because I don't think that would be telling the truth

and acting as if none of this stuff ever happens. But that scene, it's important because I think it was important to go, you know what? Like, this guy's actually for all, all the things we think are funny and all the stuff. It's like, actually, he's, he's the worst character in the entire movie. Yeah.

And I think it's, that's why it's an important scene to have in the movie because this movie, I think the director is like, Latimer is going to be the character you latch on in the movie, but do not like this person. This person won't cross any line to get where he wants to go, which is he wants to start for, for a year, and he doesn't care if it makes him a monster. But that's also why he's such a great movie character, because you're conflicted as you're watching it because he's hilarious in some scenes. He's really thoughtful in other scenes.

Then it's like, oh, yeah, except for the part where he's a fucking monster. So I don't know. I think it's important. I mean, seriously, Bill, remember when we did Vision Quest again? And we were sitting there and we're going, that moding scene with the older woman that he's like, they just wrote it like he was going to be super creepy and weird around her. And then it's like, no, he actually like jumps on her. Yeah.

And you go, what? What, like, what is this? And he's just some, like, it goes from, oh, he's, weird high school kid to know. This guy sucks. It was a different era just in a lot of, in a lot of ways. And I think probably last 15 years, they got a lot more careful about when they're veering in this territory, how to do it, how to do it in a way that is it emotionally scarring. But anyway, that wasn't great. Morewood's age the worst. I love James Con. He's just not great in this movie. And he's kind of playing the coach. Like the coach had a mild stroke right

before the season, but decided to keep going. I don't really know what he's going for. He seems kind of like a shell of himself. And it's a really strange performance. If you're talking about him compared to the other great coaches and sports movies, his name is not going to come up. I think it's contrived a lot, the football stuff. There's one moment where he loses me completely.

And Joe Kane is struggling, throwing the ball. And Coach Wiener says, come on now, keep that index finger on the ball. like, that was a bad line. It's someone, some consultant told him that right before the take to say that. And it's like something you say to a six-year-old totally loses me there. And the halftime speech is just like, was that really the best take we could get out of con? I think his best scene in the whole movie is when he kicks, what's his name, Billy off the team.

And he's like, get the hell out of if I kick the piss out of you. Like that scene gets me going. But that's an inconsequential scene. It's not the best. The best con scene I thought was with the academic board because he's struggling so much. and he knows he's lying and he's just selling his soul to football again.

So I thought he was terrific there. You know, the stuff with Joe, I thought could have been better at times. The stuff with the media was kind of funny. And I did research. I didn't know this, but Popovich admitted that he had adopted the coaching personality of James Conn in this movie.

So Popovich was like, I want to be just like him. Yeah. No, that's, you made that up. I did. Yeah. I know Riscilla's tricks now on the rewatchable. He likes to throw fake info.

Here's how you know James Kahn didn't totally work. Name me the NBA game you went to where they're like, hey, we're going to get the crowd fired up with the James Kahn program scene. Doesn't exist. It's never happened. Not in any NBA city. Morwood's age the worst. The ridiculous rainstorm to start the movie, the first game.

Was that a monsoon? Was that a typhoon? Was it in Southeast Asia? What was happening there? I've never seen it rained that heart in my life. This is a big one. I can't believe we are at. What do you got?

I know what it is because I can't believe it either. I got a prediction. Should we predict what you think it is? I already know what it is. We've been over an hour and we didn't talk about this. I would bet my life on what this is.

So would I. All right. Go ahead, predict it. I think it's going. Oh, no, we have a, that's coming. No, it's not that. Oh my God. Are you serious?

That's not it. Because I can't believe we haven't talked about the deleted scene yet. Bill, here's my guess. I think it's going to be that Joe Kane is 32 years old. Did I get it? Kyle wins it. 10 questions with Kyle Britt.

I guess I have to kill myself now. That sucks. No, but you weren't wrong because literally the next thing on my list was the deleted scene. But I can't believe you really think. I can't, the whole time I'm like, how have we not talked about the deleted scene? So go ahead. Do the 32-year-old thing first, but I still think it's the deleted scene. First of all, Kyle's wrong.

He was 33. Oh, Jesus. He's got that kind of. And a liar. That slight. seeding hair line thing where it's like it's really starting to go on the sides but he's got so he grows the front parts and he's folding them over i have no idea why he's in this movie hallie barry was the other one she's 27 she's got the hair extension she seems like she's a teacher in this movie not like a junior

i know i tell you saw the tweet i had last night but at the end of the season when they're at half time and trying to get fired up he dumps her over the gatorade the old lineman's next to this other player is like a defensive back. He looks like Lionel Hollins. He didn't pass. The Craig Schaeffer thing, to me, is the biggest flaw of the movie because I don't think he's big enough

to be a quarterback. I don't believe him. I also feel like that's such a good part in the right hands. It wasn't like they cast Brad Pitt in 2005 where they're like, hey, we need to open this movie. Craig Sheffer was like never that big of a star. And he's just too old.

And you think about it the whole time, he, it's just, weird. It seems like he's an assistant coach. A couple of things. First of all, Joe Kane isn't even a senior. He's a junior. He has a whole other year left. So, and I would, Bill, another rewatchables

that I got to do was Teen Wolf. Which is more jarring that Nick on the Dragons is still a high school student or that Joe Kane is a college junior? I feel like you need a new category for just high school and college movies. And it's like the Gabriel Carteris, like there's no

fucking way there's still a student award. and I think it goes to Joe Kane, which, by the way, Tim Wayman looks like he could be Joe Kane's dad. He is like in his mid-40s when he takes his helmet off at the end. So they're all over the map on this. The Gabriel Carteris Award is a wonderful, meaningful, awesome idea. And I'll be adding that to the next high school college thing. Craig Schaeffer is so old in this movie that it distracts you from how old Halle Berry is in the movie. When she's like making boomerang with Eddie Murphy at the same time.

And yet you say, what's the other movie you're just like, what's the other movie? doing, oh, I'm playing a sophomore in college in this other movie. I don't know why they did that. It's a mistake. So the deleted scene, Rissillo mentioned. And it's too bad that they had to cut it because it's a really important scene to establish what a lunatic Joe Kane was. In the first scene we talked about earlier when he gets drunk, the next scene was him and a

couple guys, they lie on the middle of a road as cars are flying by and then veering away from them to show like, hey, this guy's. fucking nuts. This guy's crazy. And he's like, yeah, you know, they're lying on the ground. And then the movie comes out. Two, two young guys get killed in real life, allegedly because they were inspired by the movie. Though I think, I think people were doing this before that. Everyone panics and it gets cut out of all subsequent whatever this movie. It gets cut out of the VHS. It gets cut out of subsequent airings. On Amazon right now, you wouldn't see it. It's on YouTube, though. So it does, you can find.

find it there, but Schaeffer, who I'm convinced more and more is just full of shit after the 65-yard thing. I just I'm always grain of salt with him. What's he got to say? I said, quote, I don't know if David Ward would say it, but I didn't want to do the scene.

I refused to do the scene. They called my agents and they were like, he's got to do the scene. So Sheffer, I don't know what kind of revisionist history is going on with him, but he claims... Wait, did he think it was real? Like Ward was making them actually risk their lives? sitting down in traffic?

Or is he saying, like, as a moralist because of influencing people. Okay, all right, yeah, yeah. It really messes the movie up. It does, because you can see exactly, like, think about this. There's a movie that you're going to watch, but you're never going to be able to see this deleted scene unless you saw it when it first opened.

And by the way, I didn't see it when it first opened, so I went to the theater after and knowing that the deleted scene was taken from it. And back then, there's no way to ever find it. Like, even if you said, hey, in 30 years, you can find it on the internet. Like, you would have just been like, what are you talking with?

about. This is pre-internet. So it was a huge thing. Did you see it in the theater with the deleted scene or do you see it without the deleted scene? And if you didn't see it, you'd be like, what was it? What was it? And it became this thing that was this unobtainable deal if you weren't in the theater for it. And so when you finally see it, you're like, oh, whatever, like, okay, they walk out from behind the bar, they're drunk. But it really establishes it's a missing piece to the rest of the movie when you know it's not there because it jumps from Joe Party quarterback to, oh, he's like borderline suicidal because of his family. And that's what leads to all these other acts and why he goes to rehab and who is.

And then when Khan grabs him and goes, hey, I know you went to rehab and I'm paraphrasing all of it. But you need to go back out there and be the guy that everybody knows will, you know, risk his life for his team. Lead them. Be crazy to like that guy again. Not having that. I can imagine, you know, look, they had to take it out because they had to take it out. But as a writer, you go, this, there's, there's this. hole in the new version of the movie that you can see it jumped.

He goes from party guy to wait, what the hell's wrong with this guy? And that scene was really important to that development without it. It definitely hurts the movie. You know, here's the other thing. He's kind of like poor man's Maverick, right? Like, he needs to be living on the edge.

He needs to do the flyby. He needs to go inverted with the mig to show everybody how crazy is. And it's like as if they took Maverick's MIG encounter out of the movie. It's like, he's just kind of a cocky pilot. Joe Kane just drinks a lot. When you put it that way, they did need that.

it's glaring. I saw it in the theater with the scene. So it's just, it's always weird to me when it just cuts and the next thing is like he's doing a Heisman photo shoot or whatever's going on.

Here's what I really don't understand. So like, we got to get this scene out. The violent date rape scene, let's keep that in. The scene where he stands on the train tracks with the train coming to him and then jumps off at the last second.

Let's keep that one into. But couldn't kids emulate the train scene? like just as easily. I don't understand how you keep that and you don't keep the other one. And also like, we see weird crazy shit in movies all the time. So, you know, like,

I saw somebody made this point one of the pieces about like cliffhanger came out that year. Does that mean they should have cut the scene where Stallone climbs the mountain without a harness? Because somebody might imitate that. I really bothers me that they cut this.

I don't think they should have. I surf. I don't rob banks. Easy. Yeah, there's a moment where the guy who plays styles that he didn't want to do the Wolfmobile scene. I thought it was too dangerous, but the director called his agent and made him,

and they just had to do it. Morewood's stage the worst, Christie Swanson playing tennis and jorts. Ray the tailback. I needed a better actor. I needed somebody who had more of a plan. All of it was bad. Joe Kane, the obvious body double,

who was 20 pounds heavier than him, always bothered me. No college OT. just is kind of jarring when you're watching this. You're like, just wait, just kick the field goal. You got OT coming and say, no, there's no O T. And last but not least, Chris Berman. Age the worst.

Wait, what? No way. Back in the day, this was auto. Yeah, it was auto. Like, all right, we need a get Berman on the phone. How much, I wonder how much those guys got paid for those back then. I'm saying it's age of the worst because he's doing the exact same schick he does now on Monday day football and halftime 27 years later.

Like, wow, this is now three decades of the. See, I think it's been so long now, though, that it's all respect back. Yeah. Oh, let's go back to what's age the best. I had a Berman unanswerable question. Do you think that Tim Weyman, do you think his name was specifically written to T. up Berman for he could go all the wayman? Or was it just a coincidence?

And Berman saw the name and made it up when he got the script. Definitely, I think Berman, I think he went with it. I think he explored the studio space. Yeah. George Taco Bell. Jeff the Brown paper Bagwell Eric's sleeping with the enemy

I know I never like Burma was going to interview once And they were like do something He's like What do you got? They go all right Jeff Conine

And he goes Lay up Jeff Conine the barbarian And they were like Oh my God So I don't think it had to be written tailored for Birmingham Because Berman's sitting there

And they're like Hey you got to do this college football movie thing In between half time here He'd like, ah, okay, yeah, let me get, wheymen, hurry. From Michigan, three to one. Tim, I could go all the waymen. You know, he could be like, Van Pelt and I used to love doing fake ones that were just terrible.

Yeah. Yeah. Be like, you know, Kyle, General Brandt. No. On my podcast. It's supposed to be bad on purpose. General Grant, yeah. I have a real life example that happened four days ago.

Sal and I are doing the podcast and he mentions Jeremy Chin. Sure. So on the fly, I'm like, Jeremy double chin. Just did the Berman voice and we laughed,

moved on the next thing. Berman on Monday Night Football is doing the highlights and does Jeremy double chin? He actually did it. He did the double chin. 18 hours after we joked about how that sounds like a Berman nickname

and Sal and I were texting each other going to crazy. Anyway, Chris Berman, he's aged the best and the worst. We're going to take a break and then rip through the rest of categories. This episode is brought to you by Two Good and Company Coffee Creamers. How did you take your coffee? Piping Hot, Ice, Strong, Frothy.

But if you love rich, creamy goodness and delicious flavor in every sip, try Two Good and Company Creamers. They're made with farm-fresh cream and real milk. Each serving has just three grams of sugar, 40% less than the leading coffee creamers. Two good creamers are available in sweet cream, roast of vanilla and lavender. So which one are you trying first? Find two good creamers at your local retailer in the creamer aisle. Casting what ifs, David Ward said in one of the oral histories,

he wanted Johnny Depp for Craig's role. Saw him in 21 Jump Street, thought, this kid's going to be a star. Didn't want to do it. Not a big sports fan. Said he probably wasn't a good fit for him. That's too bad. By the way, finding out that Depp wasn't a huge sports guy.

No one would know not. Yeah. Come on, David. surprising Hollywood tidbit ever. Here's the actual quote on Sheffer, who did get cast as Joe Kane. Okay. Here's the actual quote, Riscilla mentioned earlier. I actually got cast by throwing the ball.

I went out with David, and I didn't know how far I threw it, but it's probably 65 yards or something like that. I threw it between two studios right in the Disney lot. I threw like three or four bombs, and he was just like, okay, this is cool. I believe 20% of that. I believe the Disney lot part. That's about it.

65 feet, I think he might have been talking about. Like, come on, dude. Mahomes doesn't throw 65 yards sometimes. I think they just wanted to make sure it looked like he could throw a football and they were good. The 65 yards, like how many QBs in the league right now could throw 65 yards? Less than half? Okay, first of all, a lot of the guys can throw at 65 yards. Yeah, Cam Newton cannot throw at 65 yards.

Yeah, I don't know. Phil Rivers, in no way. Okay, well, what are we going to list how many quarterbacks can throw over 65 yards? That's a real number. It's a hefty to throw. 65 yards is from the 45, well, now we're going to talk. 35. 35.

35. 35. 35 to the end zone. That's thrown a Hail Mary from the end zone. It's a Hail Mary. 35 to the end zone. I still think enough quarterbacks that would load up. There's a longer list there.

The point of the whole thing is that he says that's why he got casted. They let him throw one fucking real pass in the, movie and then use the double and then they admitted the other people admitted they're like yeah he was a little weird on some of his throws like everybody in the oral history's talking that his release wasn't all that great there's no maybe down a hit maybe it rolled down a hill yeah yeah maybe he counted it like a punt like he counted the roll after it hit the yeah it's not as bad as uh like rudy stein and bad news bears or like some of the iconic terrible throwing motions we've had in baseball and football movies sure freddie prince junior

a major league still kills me. Yeah, there's been some bad ones. This would be a good spin-off series for us. Do you want to maybe like a B side of this, do a list of which guys can throw 65 yards or not? It's an interesting number. Let's do it on your podcast. Yeah, after the, after the pod, we'll just do it on yours.

I think you should do that, no, like a huge buy week for good morning football. Okay, that's fine. I think it's funny he picks 65 yards because I really do think that's sort of like right at that Mendoza cutoff line. Like if he had said 50 or 80, those were, but that's right in the heart of it. Drew Brees, not a chance to throw on 65 yards, even when he's healthy. We got,

Ryan, I think it's half the QBs. I think it's more than half. I think we're probably doing one of these things where we're all agreeing, but I jumped you as if you were saying it's not that many. And I think it's more. I just think that, look,

in a non-game situation, standing at the 35 and having to get it to the end zone, there's still a lot of professional quarterbacks that could do it. But in the course of actually doing it in the game, you're right. Like, I don't think Camp could.

Breezed no way. I don't know if Rothesberger could. I don't know. There's a lot. We'll do it on the B side on somebody's podcaster show. Best that guy, aka the Joey Pantsor Ward. I got two great ones.

One is one of the offensive linemen eventually became the big guy on ER. He was like the medical assistant dude. And those are the only two things I knew him for it. But he was actually kind of a weirdly important side character on ER. And then the other one, you mentioned how great Joe Kane's dad was, Roussel, we did Vision Quest.

That was Elmo the chef. Gave the big speech about Pele. that's incredible yeah so that guy Elmo the chef Joe Kane's dad what the hell's that guy's deal like hey we need you to just outshine the room in these bit pieces

because he's an incredible actor his scene on the couch you know granted the Merry fucking Christmas with the beer cans as decorations like hey you go what are you Hey Joe what are you doing for Christmas break Going home

Well it's like I don't know how Duval Robert DeVov guys like that Puccino. I don't know what happened, Elmo, the chef, but I feel like he was right there from the talent standpoint. The Latimer wins the next two. We don't really need to debate it. The Deanne Waiters Award and the Vincent Hanna, give me all you got award for spectacular overacting. He just, it's not even worth the debate. I do have a new award just for this one. It's the reverse Deon Waiters Award for worst he check in a movie. It's Bo Schembeckler. Inexplicably being thrown in the booth and just on autopilot as an announcer. It's a

Like, why didn't they tell him to, like, have a pulse? It's just awful. I feel like they had very little time with Bo that day, and they worked with them. They gave them two takes, and Bo had to go. But you needed some sort of, of all the wacky things back then in the announcer's booth, you know, that's when Rob Schneider was doing necessary roughness, and obviously Bob Euker was doing major league. That was all fun.

And they could have cut the Schembeckler stuff. It dies completely. Pointless scenes to me. Yeah, a lot of the play-by-play color stuff wasn't great. I thought the media scrums were better than that part of it. One of the weirdest things that kind of plays in line that Schembeckler seen is later on when the boosters decide to look outside of the glass window. And it's as if, hey, how many boosters can we get to stand in this one spot and watch

the game behind the glass? We're like, let's try to get 30 deep over here, as if any booster would say this, this is an, we only have one spot to watch the game from. It's good. Next category is for casting couch. I'm going to give you two choices. You tell me which one you rather were to like. Will Smith.

Will Smith. Where is Darnell McDonald's. As coach. Or Darnel Jefferson. Or Latimer. Yeah. Latimer, coach. He could do anything.

Here are your two choices. You could have Robert Duval as the coach in James Kahn's part. He's coming off. This is right around the time when he starts doing stuff like this because he's in Days of Thunder with Cruz. Sure. Right before is like the pit boss guy. So it's not unrealistic that he had been in this.

Or young Ben Affleck is Joe Kane. So Ben Affleck is in the dazed and confused. He's big, too. What was his character in days and confused? What was his name? I'm blanking. Albersram or whatever his name was. Hercules.

Purple. Right. So he's big enough to do it. He would have been realistic because he would have been around the age of it. And I was thinking that would be, that would have been a better or more realistic joking. So which one, you could have Duval or Affleck,

which one would you want? I'm definitely one. on Affleck, the athlete, the size. Plus, like, Affleck's run into some issues in his life with substance abuse that he could probably narrow into. And also, Affleck also delivered the all-time after-school special steroid abuse movie. So, like, he's got all kinds of connective tissue to the film. Give me Affleck as Joe Kane. That's how I feel. Rossilla. Khan mails it in in too many different scenes here. I don't think you could ever put that on DeVal's Scattering Report. So I'm I'm going to go the other way with this one.

I don't, Kane's age doesn't bother me as much. Some guys age differently, genetics. Okay. Half-fast internet research. Latimer and Alvin Mack played teammates at Necessary Roughness. That's why he... I think that Dwayne Davis, I think his name is, who plays Alvin Mack. I think he's that guy because he plays a receiver and necessary roughness.

And the best part is he plays a football player in fucking Beetlejuice in the underworld when he's like, coach, I don't think we survive that. crash. He's playing a football player three times and he's the guy. That's why I like him as that. Yeah, he's almost like he's not a that guy.

He's just Alvin Mack. I don't even, as you see him, I'm like, oh, there's Alvin Mack. Omar Reps, Christy Swanson, and Andrew Brian Arski were also all in higher learning together. We mentioned the South Carolina thing. You can see it if you look

carefully when they have shots of the fans and everyone's in orange, even though nobody in the game is wearing orange. So that doesn't totally work. Dwayne Davis and one of the oral histories gave us this. South Carolina's not orange, though. That's weird.

Yeah, I don't understand either. Oh, so it said in the game, maybe they were playing Tennessee. And that's why you had the orange. There you go. Okay, all right. Here's what Dwayne Davis said. I'll let you guys decide what your shit detector is on it. I actually blew out my knee, sophomore senior years at Mizzou during filming.

I broke the metacarp on my hand because I played, they asked me if I would do a lot of my own stuff. The only thing I didn't do was when Alvin got cut and broke his leg. I didn't do it because that's what happened to me in my college career. The two stuntmen that did it both blew out their knees on that play. So I watched this. I don't want to make Dwayne Davis mad at me because I feel like he would beat me in a fight pretty easily. I don't think the stuntman blew their knees out on that play.

I slow-mode it. I just don't see it. I don't know how you guys feel. All right. Let's try to give- I almost never get hurt. Yeah, like not that. let's try to give them the benefit of the doubt here okay it feels like both watching the hits that we all agree

with like these guys were knocking the shit out of each other and put it in a movie like whoever was getting hit these guys were getting hit to have movie people just be around and make sure that you're only hitting into each other nonstop like basically with movie supervision but not football supervision i can i could see guys getting hurt i could see it that that's seems like it's dramatic. A blowout seems a little excessive. It does seem excessive, but I could also see a version of this where these guys

were hitting each other so much, as Bill said off the top. Like, you're reading about it going, are you serious? You guys just smashed the shit out of each other the entire time. And Max, in real life, is like, I couldn't believe how much they were making everybody hit. I mean, if this movie came out today, O'T have done a week on the making of the movie. Bob Lee comes out of retirement.

I'm like, um, a movie is about to hit the theaters, but let's go to Tom. Renaldi who's going to make someone cry. Joe Kane's stunt double for the actual football scenes was former USC star quarterback Mike Hold. I don't know who that is. He wasn't a star. I just threw that in there.

I believe that. The ISO shots of Joe Kane's passes are absolutely gorgeous, beautiful rotation, tight-ass spiral. I believe that. And they should have used them for more. By the way, that's the USC that's South Carolina here, just in case everybody needs to understand it. So, you know, a lot of people listening to this would probably make the USC assumption about Southern California. Oh, when I did the research, I thought it was, I thought it was OJ USC. I didn't realize it was South Carolina.

Well, I'm sure USC loves being known as OJ USC from Bill. But, yeah, South Carolina. South Carolina is also USC. And they'll kind of get pissed about it, but you're like, hey, sorry. Yeah. You know. OJ, did you win that. He win the husband. He became a huge star and he killed his wife and a waiter. I don't know.

True. What? Wait, what are you doing right now? I was just making the case for OJ. USA. Wait, more half-fessnered research. So they filmed it during

South Carolina's October 31st game against Tennessee. The Gamecox on a two-game winning streak. It was a big game. They had 16 minutes to film action for three games. The Mississippi State game, Michigan game, and the Georgia Tech game.

They had 16 minutes. Guys came out there. Everything was scripted. and then on the last play, Mike Hold, who is the Joe Kane stand in, they have 30 seconds left, and he fumbles, which they have in the movie, and it bounces a couple times, and he actually picks it up. That was not in the script.

It was actually the guy fucked up, and then he had to do the sidearm pass to Omar Epps, and Omer Epps caught it and got hit. But all of that, they basically, like, if they didn't nail it on that shot, they would have had to like fake it later. So little drama, little sports movie drama. Is that it's a forward pass.

It should be incomplete. If you watch it again, his hand is going forward. It's not a fumble. It's a terrible call that would have been reviewed now. When Kane, quote unquote, drops the ball, full hand moving forward, which would have whistled the play dead incomplete, and ESU would have lost.

Right, no replay back then. No, and it was a bad call. They missed it. It's kind of funny that because he regains control of the football, they decide on the edit, let's keep it in. To me, it was too much. I mean, the play already has a million things going on.

Then it's like, hey, how about a little fumble? And Reader covers it on his own. They love that screen, though. They love throwing it to the running backs. I don't know what these sets were. It must have been jumbo sets all the time. So you mentioned they based Latimer on Tommy Chalkin, who is, there's a Sports Illustrated article about that guy.

It's called The Nightmare of Steroids from 1988. So Ward used that guy. He also used a quarterback named Tom Bill. who played at Penn State, had the whole alcohol rehab thing. And then the thing with the quarterback dating the coach's daughter was the Sally Nessie story. So he stole that. Here's more, here's more bragging from Sheffer. It's great how long it took Bill to kind of warm up to what he really wanted to do this entire podcast.

Shefford, quote, I took some big hits. Some of it's on film. I got upended and did a full 360. Wow. You might believe that. I don't know. Hasn't had many hits since then, though. Apex Mountain.

I thought his quote in one of the things I read where he said, Iron Man, that was based on me. Shut up, dude. Bricel has really explored the studio space to this one. Apex Mountain. Omar Epps, I'm going to say yes. Okay. Kind of peaks here. He has the higher learning, but then I think when he went on ER,

that's when the wheels came off a little bit. But coming out of this movie, I was like, what's next for this dude? He's one of the great sports movie actors we've ever had. I loved him back then. I really did. I think everybody loved him.

I don't think there was an anti-Omar Epps opinion out there in the 90s. This was a year after Juice. He's got higher learning coming up. Good run for him. Next one, Hallie Berry Hair extensions. I would say Apex only because she never did it again. Craig Sheffer, yes. Also, the Apex.

for Craig Sheffer tall tales after a movie because I'm not sure I believe half of his quotes. Didn't Jeffer say that he got a letter from Bill Parcells about trying out for the Patriots after this movie came out? That they actually were looking for him to back up Ledsoe. I read that. No, it was true. Yeah, right? You heard that, right?

He had said, he goes, I just, I'd love to have you around. He's like, I'd love to have you around the program. That's it. It's good. Christy Swanson I probably Buffy the Vampire Slayer for her Ferris too

yeah the guy played Latimer absolutely so here's a good I have two left here's an important one though was this the Apex Mountain for steroids I thought that might come up

because right after this why you sound so sad Vince McMahon has the steroids trial right after baseball has its reckoning coming with Bonds and McGubley. in the late 90s.

This is still kind of the sweeping and under the rug steroids era and it kind of peaks here and in baseball. Huge power surge in 93 in baseball. I don't know. I think you can make the case. It's wildly irresponsible.

The whole movie says, use steroids, you'll be a great football player and the second you stop, you're going to suck. So start again. I mean, it's an infomercial. It's steroids porn for two hours. I mean, it's terrible.

So I actually think I agree. They don't think they've ever been maybe drier. Drago taking them in Rocky 4, but that was a brief one scene. Yeah, but he was Russian and Russians do bad stuff all the time. So everybody knows that about Russia. Kyle, Kyle, did you guys have a urine guy at Princeton? Oh, Swapper guy? Sure. Yeah. His name was Kevin.

And if you need a quick one, he was $100 and he'd come over and you'd be like, what are you doing down there, man? And he'd be like, don't worry about it. Taking the good, the dope urine out, good stuff in. It was great. After you're already hooked up to the urine machine. Yeah, whatever that was. By the way, how old was that guy? 40? Why is there a campus urine guy who's in his 40s?

I had him down for that guy. That actor is in a time to kill. He plays one of Kiefer Sutherland's Klan brothers. He is. He's in a clan enlistee, the urine guy. Look up in a time to kill. That's a great one. I had that in picking notes, but we'll just cover it now.

Apparently, it's an impossible medical procedure. It's completely made that up. Yeah, there's no way you can actually inject urine into somebody's kidneys. It's actually impossible. Also, where do you get that cylinder that he puts in the toilet paper dispenser that just twists in magically out like that? It's like something you get into James fucking Bond movie. Where do you get one of those things? No Amazon back in.

That thing works out well. Latimer was great. Last Apex Mountain. Apex Mountain for people realizing that Michigan fucking sucks. Well, they did go on to share a title just a few years later, which is their only title in like 60 years of football. Brian Greasy. Because I feel like my generation, people are in on Michigan for a while. Like the people like me who didn't care about, you know, have a specific college football team that competed with them.

And somewhere around the 90s, it turns. And I'm wondering if this was the start of when it turns. Because in the 80s, you had like the big chill. It's like, oh, cool. These people all went to Michigan. They really loved it. And it was like very favorable pop culture of Michigan coverage. And then here it turns.

And this is where the real Michigan starts to come out. it's Lloyd Carr era Michigan. It's successful Michigan, I think, and they got the highest. They are kind of loathsome, and the way Tim Weiman never acknowledges Alvin Max shit talking and completes the pass and takes the hit and probably goes number one in the draft. It is kind of loathsome. Not with that body. He's like a second rounder.

A couple picking nits. I don't think anyway Ray lets Darnell cutting on the dance with Halliberry. I just don't see any scenario in any movie where that happens ever in any form of. life. I don't know who cuts in anywhere. I mean, what are you? Arrow Flynn? Okay?

Like, this whole cutting in is anyone who are cutting in? They weren't doing it when we were kids. And yet it's somehow, it hangs on in movie lore where they'll be like, hey, you might, how about, you mind if you fuck off? And so there's that part of it. But what's less believable is that he would change the play for the guy that's now sleeping with his girlfriend. So as unbelievable as that part is, there's no way he'd be like, and by the way,

it's like in 90 real minutes of time where you go earlier I blew a block. Right. But you know what, Darnell, go in and win this one for us. Because for what, for no apparent reason,

I've completely decided to change my tune to you. Let's do this together. He says, fuck autumn and fuck you too. And he throws a drink in his face. That's 10 minutes prior to that. Yeah,

right. They fought. Also, what's age of the worst, Ray Griffin's sweater that he's wearing in that party. Oh, yeah.

But not his khakis. I had that sweater. Morewood's aged the worst. So before the last kickoff, Darnel licks his hands. I mean, it's among the many. You mentioned some of the other egregious mistakes he makes. That one was weird. I didn't get that one.

We know what I love, though, is the Newman gloves. Shout out to anybody around that era. And then I kept rocking the Newman gloves in softball, early late 90s, early 2000s, the big end. If you didn't have Newman's, you might as well not even show up. Morewood's age the worst. We mentioned the pretty brutal sexual assault almost scene. But then right after, they're talking to the coaches about it.

It's like, her dad's a big booster. He's fine. He's not happy, but he's going to drop charges. She's like, it's resolved in two seconds. First of all, as a dad, I just feel like it's like, no, you know, let's do what's best for the program here. I'm positive. That's not the reaction of any.

Any dad? So anyway, that was bad. And then, so we talked about ESU's bowl game eligibility. So if they win their eight and three, if they lose their seven and four, I don't know what the bowl game scene was like in 93, but aren't they going either way at seven and four? Does it seven and four at least get you playing on like December 26th? I don't know.

I mean, the bowl game total now is like 45 bowl games. So like 90 out of 120 plus make it. It wasn't like that back then, but it wasn't like it was our parents or something where it was actually a huge deal to be in a bowl game. So I imagine seven to four probably gets you in, but I don't know. I mean, I can look it up real quick. How many bowl games were there in 1994? I think they're looking at the pool and weed eater independence bowl.

Like that's, you're getting in, you're getting your free backpack and mouse pad. And like, that's it. We got to somehow we're at the one hour, 40 minute mark, which I'm really proud of us. Right. Oh, you know what? I'm not sure if they're in a bowl game. It's only 19. So it's more than doubled.

Okay, fair. Could this be remade as a 10-episode Netflix show? Yes. Probably unanswerable questions. First one. Did Brett Farv model his career after Joe Kane? It's really close. Think about it.

Really close. First of all, we think this movie might have been filmed in Mississippi, which is where Brett Farve went to college. Brett Farv famously had a ton of pain killer, alcohol, all kinds of shit, was super reckless, kind of carried himself like Joe Kane. I think he would have been the only quarterback I could see hanging out with Darnell the freshman for no reason, just the two of them.

I don't. He was just walking around with Edgar Bennett when he was a rookie and like he was best friends with him and Dorsey Levin's sense. I think more guys would have liked at this age for far if he would have had more friends than a new freshman running back. Okay.

Well, anyway, I think he was very jocan. Most depressing sports movie injury, you guys both have to answer. I'm going to give you four options. Alvin Mack, Jerry Birdier, Booby Miles or Lance Harbor, out of those four, what is the most promise stolen away

from us as football fans with those four careers? I look at Lance Harbor and he's going to go on to a coaching career so he'll have prosperous times ahead. I don't sympathize for him. I honestly mean this, the scene between Frank Winners and Alvin Mack

when I'm never going to play again, and my coach, it's heartbreaking. It reminds me a little bit of the Donald Gibbs, John Claude Van Damme, anywhere, I'll be there for you, my friend. Brings the tears. It's a great take. I love you, my friend. I go Alvin Mac as well

because I think he's a top five pick. I think he plays for 15, 16 years, maybe even a little early Ray Lewis vibe to him. Ends up like on Arizona or some weird team. It's just like seven Pro Bowls becomes like the dominant middle linebacker. I think that was our biggest loss. What do you think, Rosillo?

Tell the truth, I'm surprised you weren't serious about this one considering the concussion in concussion the movie with will smith is a real matter tell the truth tell the truth i named it cTE it came to me like the gods or you just stole the name the name from somebody else what conference was es u and we could never mention we could never figure that out and then uh was joe k in a first round pick not yeah i don't think you can go to rehab and have that throwing motion and then be a first rounder. If he kills at his senior year and he stays clean and not in that offence.

His yard for a tap have to be like five. So you think like fifth rounder, maybe teams trying to turn him around, get his shit together off the field? I think the comp is Jake Plummer. I think he is a carbon copy of Jake Plummer and Jake Plummer turned out to be a good pro. I don't think he was a first round pick,

maybe second, but I think that's where he goes. I'm thinking third. Okay. All right. Most important question of the podcast, what piece of memorabilia would you want from this movie? Oh, the doorker, Mac. Yeah.

Doorknob. Yeah, the Mac family doorknob thing? Yeah. Riscilla, what do you think the Mac family home would go for on Airbnb? What would be the rental rate? Oh, you're buying the dirt. You know, I don't think those, I don't think that, you know, I like people on flip shows, but, like, it's got good bones that I don't trust the guys that did the framing

of that one ahead of time. Not according to code. I would take anything I can get from Latimer, maybe his onk necklace, probably his neck roll that he wore. He launched the neck roll industry as someone like Kylie Jenner would now on social media.

Every asshole with a tool CD and his disc man had to get a neck roll after Latimer wore it. So I'd get the neck roll. Yeah, Steve Grogan tried to make that a thing and it just didn't work because he was a quarterback. Do you know how jacked up your neck has to get for that role

to prevent your neck from going any further. Right. My pick is, so I don't know if this is possible, but Latimer's entire urine sample replacement kit, I just think it would be a great thing to bring out every once in a while from the garage. Like, hey, guess what this is?

But the easier, probably, you know, more palatable version would just be the thing that he shoved in the James Bond urine sample thing. A movie used urine sample from Latimer. I just feel like, that that's gaining value as the years go along. They keep that on a wine fridge.

That's an entertainment piece when you have company. Or underneath the TV, like next to them, maybe an award or something out of the game used. I still don't understand. His dad was sleeping outside on the porch, on a couch. The TV's broken? Wait, can't you go over to Jackie Bees and watch it with Jerry? I love his dad, man. I want to party with his dad.

You know, and it is what makes this movie a 90s movie is in the 80s, I think his dad's in the seat for the last game. It's like, oh, come on, son. In the 90s, right, no, dad's not there. That seat's empty. We're going dark. We're going black hole sun, Soundgarden. That was the other, I forgot to mention that on the Woodstage the worst, is they didn't take advantage of some of the, you mentioned earlier,

but there were a couple nice spots to make this movie feel like it came out of 1993 musically, and they missed all of them. All right, who won the movie? Ryan. Michigan. Mm. Ladimir, because, I mean, it's the first thing you think of when you think of this movie. I think when you walked out of Rocky 4, it was like, holy shit, Drago was so fucking cool.

And I think when you walk out of this movie, you want to take steroids and paint your face like a skeleton. I think it's Latimer. But quick shout out to Iowa football, who also, they take out Alvin Mack and Latimer on one night and on their infantic Stadium. It's a hell of a movie for Iowa, too. Yeah, that's really interesting. Yeah, the Iowa does have a case. I think Latimer won as well. And more importantly, all the people who then decided to emulate themselves after Latimer were also winners over the next 10 years.

Of the Latimer ripoff people. So I think he has the biggest influence. He's the first thing anyone's going to remember from this movie. And honestly, there hasn't really been a character like it, but a football movie before since for better and worse. So anyway, this was great. I'm sorry I didn't wear my tank top guys. but Kyle, Priscilla.

Can we say again why we're doing this, Bill, just one more time? It's less than anybody sees us like, what's up with those two assholes with the tank tops on? We didn't really contextualize it. Honestly, if you can't figure it out, then you didn't watch this episode.

You know, like so. You know, this would be one you skipped. Thanks, guys.